Day#6: "9-6" Welcome to Working Life
9:58 PM - Posted by 12pt5 - 2 Kommentare

Good Evening Fellas! Or should I say good morning good old Germany!

"Ahhh....rhhhh....mhhhh....eeeehhh" ...."What the hell is that?"...where my thoughts when I opened my eyes at 3 am this night. A girl I thought, a girl in our room which probably has nightmares. Yes that's it, let's wake her up to make them go away... WAIT!!! When I went to bed last night there hasn't been one single girl left in my room so what the hell is going on here?! I got awake, my eyes and ears worked on full power again: It wasn't a girl who had nightmares!!! NO!!! My roomate and some girl got late!!! In MY room! How lousy is that? Hahahaha! But also funny as hell! Especially when the guy, sleeping at the top of the bunk bed the action was going on, came into the room and hadn't any idea what was going on. Of course I acted napping, laughed holes into my blanket! Welcome to the Hostel California I thought!
(Where are the nightshot cameras if you need them! That's what I actually thought, hahaha!)

The next morning I woke up at 7! Perfect! Enough time to go down to the beach and jog for the first time in the USA. No sooner said than done I put on my nice Adidas Runners, trunks and sunglasses and went down to the beach. It was already almost 20 degrees, a lot of runners at the boulevard and the sun raisin up. It was my first run since a pretty long time, but if you got such perfect conditions you gotta go for it. So I went down the promenade listening to Hit the lights and enjoying the morning. Suddenly I saw 2 boogie-boards rest on a trash can, I've already thought about buying one, but what a possibility for a "Schwob" is that?! Get one for free?!?! So I checked them, one was completely broken but the security leash was still okay, the other board was in a good condition but the leash was ragged. So for me as mixture of
MacGyver, BA and Bruce Willis it was easy to make one complete out of it and so there it was: My brand-new Boogie Board! I promptly took off my close and went into the water to check some morning waves with my new baby! And it works perfect, what a start of the day.

After coming back to the hostel, showering and having some pancakes it was time to leave for my: FIRST DAY OF WORK! Great and exciting! I had to go there by bus, so not the first day of work excited me, the busdrive there to should be the bigger task. But after a short talk to the nice busdriver it has been peanuts. Work is about 15 min away from my hostel in a office-complex in Marina del Rey. My boss Jochen, was already there and welcomed me to my new work place. It's small but sweet, we're just in three and I got my own iMac+external screen workstation. He told me about some projects they're into right now...which are actually really really cool! Especially the campaign for the climate conference in Coppenhagen this year. To give you a clue where I'm working at, check T-Sign Studios. After that introduction I've set up my new workspace and Holger the other guy working there introduced himself to me. He's also a very kind and good person. And so we started work. They need me to work with them at an online magazine for an existing website they've done. I made some researches, started to scribble and built my first wireframes.... I think the next 6 months are going to be very very interersting and good, cause even work here in Cali is great!

We went together for lunch to an italian food store and I ate some real tasty vegie burgers! Jochen, my boss, who actually is vegan, recommended them to me and he was so right! To bother you not longer with lousy food and work stories and get myself to bed soon.....
I went directly to the beach again after work, went for some sweet waves with my boogie board, cooked a perfect meal again and watched some Nitro Circus Episodes, cause no one of you was online! We should change that! So the plan is, you start drinking every night, staying up till morning breaks and skype with me! There hasn't been a better plan for decades...so go for it!
Oh wait, I have no pictures in this post what actually sucks as hell...so for you my friends, that's the girl I('m going to meet) hopefully will meet soon:






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Day#5: Ocean Avenue
9:31 PM - Posted by 12pt5 - 0 Kommentare


For all of you who don't know why I chose this title, just make sure to check this one. This post goes out to my dearest Josie!

I've stood up at 9 this morning, made again some sweet sweet pancakes and met the guy from holland again while eating them. He was about to leave the hostel for another one in Santa Monica. So I took the opportunity and went with him. We took the bus, which is a lot cheaper than in Germany. You pay 0.75$ for a long long way, you even can get to downtown for a buck I think. It took 15 minutes to get to an almost brand new city I thought. Santa Monica is the way more clean and less busy than Venice, cause Venice is like rushhour all day. I was really impressed about the beauty of this LA-District. We went directly to Santa Monica Hostel to check him in, and it looks the way cleaner and tidier than my one right now and it's even 4 bucks cheaper each night. So I may move to it the next days...who knows? Who cares?:-)

So we went to the 3rd Promenade, which is a street with lots of shops and musicians. One of them did a great show with techno beats and his violin. He was awesome! I went to a lot of shops, Quicksilver, Apple Store and finally the Rip Curl store. Everything is a lot cheaper than in Germany, you pay 20$ for a Rip Curl Shirt, which is 14 Euros, in Germany you'd probably pay more than double of the price. So I went for a nice new shirt and slippers, my first shopping experience abroad;-) I like it! After our little shopping trip we went down to the famous Ocean Avenue! It felt really really good to be there, unfortunately my Ipod wasn't filled with Yellowcard, so I couldn't listen to the song while being there...but who cares! From the Ocean Ave it's only a "stone-throw" to the Santa Monica Pier, which actually is very very nice.




Not because of these lousy attractions, because of the nice wooden floor your walking on and the fresh sea breeze. The funny thing I didn't know about the pier, that there is a Bubba Gump Store on it! We couldn't trust our eyes, both
remembering the movie Forest Gump, so we went in there and asked a kind lady which of both was first, movie or store at the pier. Like we both guessed the movie was first! The pier actually wasn't that crowded like I expected on Labor Day, but I think everyone went down to the beach, cause weather was great again. So we walked to the end of the pier, seamed by a lot of anglers, and looked at all of the little shops, trying to sell senseless "rumsh". After a short visit at one of the oldest carousels (i think), which was built in 1914 we went back to city centre to catch something to eat.
After a pizza slice we went again to some stores, and guess what?! Theres a store which sells baseballcaps and nothing more! It's like heaven, I surely will make it back to it and buy a lot of new caps (just for me, not for you Gobo Go Bob! Just kiddin!) I wanted to go to the beach once more today, so I left Santa Monica and went back to Venice. Before hitting the water I made some spaghetti aglio-oglio to smell nice for my salty ocean;-) The beach was, like I expected, crowded, but with a width of over 30 meters you got a lot of space to lay down. I put my towel to the sand, layed on it and let the sun do its' rest while listening to The Ataris. After a few minutes I went into the great sea to bodysurf again, and do you know what's the funny thing about the people at the beach? All of these Mexicans go into the water fully dressed!!! What the fuck??? Why??? I have no clue. Jeans, Shirts, who cares...the only thing they don't put off are their shoes and socks, which actually would look funny as hell if they'd wear socks while swimming beside you.

Back home in hostel there was a huge Labor-Day-Barbecue waiting for all guests. I was looking forward to it the whole day, cause Carl, a big black guy, promised me that they got a lot of vegetarian stuff too. They had it, but it was tasting like sh***, completely burned and not flavored in any way....but what are you suposed to do. "Hold your gosh and put it in";-)
So now I'm stitting here again, on my lovely couch in the hostel lounge, writin to you and expecting my first day of work...

I'll let you know how it was like tomorrow.
Now: Checking used surfboards, shipping prices to Germany and watching another episode of NC.

Todays ride is for Bruce, a red lightning called "Electra"...That's for you my dear!!!

See you tomorrow!
Good night!









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Day#4: Snow at Venice Beach...
8:51 PM - Posted by 12pt5 - 0 Kommentare


First of all you should listen to one of the best german punk bands while reading it. Cashless - Check it out!!!

If you ask yourself what's going on in the pic on top of this post, it's just snow at Venice Beach, nothing special! It's sunday, the day before Labor Day in America and it should be a huge sunday for Venice. Supergirls-Contest was just about to make a stop here, directly at the beach near my hostel. So of course I went there, to check out the "skills" of Americas Funsport Ladies! When I came there I couldn't believe what I saw there, these weirdos really brought snow to the beach to let the snowboard rail contest happen! That's sick, that's America!

I watched the first two qulification runs, each 20 minutes and I gotta say, "hat down" for the girls!:-) They showed a lot of sweet railrides to the crowd. And the best thing: the DJ! He played some really cool songs for them, especially when he turned on Pennywise' Bro Hymn! I've just attached some of the shots I did with my sweet 40D beneath this paragraph so you can get an idea of what I'm talking about. (I love the 2nd one - haha - fooled yourself girl!)



You should check out my Flickr Account to see some more shots of the sweet Snowboard-Ladies! There even was one German rider, but I could barely understand her name, cause the hyper-cool host of the show pronounced it like she was a girl from Texas or some other place in hell. Unfortunately she got hurt real bad at her knee after a landing a perfect one.



After the second quali heat I went over to the skateboarders who where preparing for their big show. And there she was!!! My first LOVE of Cali!!! It took whole four days to find her;-) but check it out.


Black hairs, beautiful face and skateboardskills "by where your shoes get pulled of"(hehe!). Her name was....ah...lets name her Ashley!;-) So yes, where exactly have I stoped.... At the skatboarders, yes, they've been practising some tricks for their finals, which I didn't want to wait for cause the californian sun got hotter and hotter...

So I went back to the hostel, ate pasta with tomato salad and checked the pics I've taken before. I'm really really happy with my Canon 40D, she's my baby, doing good pics and today was the first day I've done sequence shooting which also rules as hell! After watching another Episode of Nitro Circus, I decided to go down to the beach and swim for the first time in the sea. Even without a wetsuit the water is very warm, lets say Gobos Wiener would be a lot longer than in the Flappach, just to give you a clue:-) I swam out trough the waves, which is actually hard work, and waited to catch some for bodysurfing. That rules man! And it works, another thing I'm lucky with my musclepacked body, I even beat one fat guy with his body board! Yeah man!:-)

After again catching the last sunny moments at the beach I went to the mexican store, getting some zucchini, paprika, diet coke and ice cold non-fizzy water (which are my new loved drinks). So I cooked some pretty tasty vegetablepasta and ate it in front another episode of Nitro Circus. If you haven't checked it out yet, go for it! That was my fourth day, I'm getting used to a pretty good life here!




At the end, again another ride, one of the thousand sweet ones here. This is for you Gregory, I'm not pretty sure, but I think we talked about exactly that one yesterday.
See you buds! Tomorrow: Santa Monica




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